For those who don’t know, I started hosting an occasional poker game at my place in San Diego which quickly turned into a weekly affair. It also caused the transformation of my house into a true bachelor pad with the conversion of a spare bedroom into the ‘poker room,’ complete with cardroom themed décor, a [personally built] poker table, and beer fridge. The game went on regularly for over two years and is one of the things I still really miss about San Diego.

Being in town last week, I made the request to get the old gang together for a game and Dave willingly obliged. Pretty average session for me. Game went into pissing contest mode for a while so I just sat back and let a couple of the other guys duke it out. Bingo, anyone?

I did make one horrible play on what should have been an auto lay down hand. I’m in middle position and pick up pocket 10’s. Dale (who’d been making large raises on a lot of hands), on my right raised to $3. I bumped it up to $6 in hopes of closing out the rest of the table right there. Don, on the button, goes all-in for another $18 or so. Of course, my first instinct was AA or KK and that whoever was going to call this was going to be in a tough spot. And, I assumed that someone was going to call which would make it easier to lay down my hand. Imagine my surprise when everyone folded. In fact, I was so surprised that no one called that I talked myself into believing that Don was just making a move to pick up chips and completely ignored my original analysis that took into account him pushing all-in against a raise and re-raise (yeah, I was playing well at that point in the night). So, naturally I call and am shown what I already know.

Lesson: Always listen to that first instinct…